Food Action - Food Tech Services

Food Action is a food technology consultancy based in the central north island of New Zealand. We mainly service Auckland, Waikato and Bay of Plenty, but have completed site work from Wellington to Kaitaia, and have several international clients. We specialise in custom food control plans, national programmes, food labelling, product development, and food science. Contact us now on freephone or email. Check out our comprehensive range of services below.

Food Control Plans, National Programmes and Legislative Requirements

Food safety management can be a costly exercise. You can over do it and add cost daily, or under do it and risk sending out unsafe product which can be disastrous. The new Food Act 2014 is now live so you have a few options on how you can manage your business, and we can help you do this while keeping costs under control.

We have our basic template for a custom food control plan which has been implemented in several operations and verified by an MPI approved auditor. This template is thorough and at the same time, simple – written in plain English. It is also aligned with all our forms and templates so can be implemented quickly and efficiently.

Are you starting a new business, are currently council registered, or perhaps currently have a food safety programme and want to save some costs by changing to a National Programme and are unsure of the implications? We can help

From 1st July 2016 all food imported into New Zealand will have to be done by a registered food importer. That means, if you want to import food then you will have to become a food importer yourself, or go through a food import agent.

We are located 500m from the main gates of the Port of Tauranga, New Zealand’s largest port. Our site is also less than 300m from 2 large dry stores and 2 large cool and coldstores, and Customs are just 10 minutes away.

If you need someone to help you import food into New Zealand legally, then we are ideally placed to suit your needs.

Labelling Compliance

Are you a bit confused by the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code, or don’t even know what it is? We can help.

Food Labelling

Want a legally compliant food label? We are experts.

Food Labelling

Confused by what needs to go onto a label? There are pages and pages of legislation that need to be read and reviewed in order to create a label. We can do this for you, or show you how to do it yourself. Contact us now

Nutrition Panels

Need help calculating a nutrition panel? We can help

Nutrition Panels

With the government introducing instant fines for incorrect panels, it is now more important than ever to get this right. We can create nutrition panels for you, or show you how to do them yourself. Contact us now

Health Claims

Not sure what you can claim about the benefits of your product?

Health and Nutrition Claims

There is little doubt that claims made about foods help sell some products, but are they always legal? New laws were introduced in 2016 which standardises what claims can be made. Find out what you can claim.

Health Stars

Need help with the Health Star Rating system?

Health Stars

Do you need help calculating the health stars for your product, or need to reformulate to get more stars? Don’t miss this opportunity to enhance and show the health credentials of your product. Contact us now

Supermarket Entry

Getting into supermarkets can be tricky and frustrating – we know. If you are looking to start off, Foodstuffs is most likely the route you will take rather than Progressive / Countdown.

Foodstuffs have several routes in – via stores with SAP systems, via stores without SAP, and via the Category Manager. Each process is quite different and we’ve done them all for either our own products (www.rline.co.nz) and other’s products.

If you get the steps wrong it can set you back by months and be costly. If you want to get into the supermarkets, we can help you navigate through the whole process.

GS1 Barcodes

Foodstuffs Exchange

GS1 Product Recall

Foodstuffs Compliance Pack

Priced Packing Slips

GS1 Product Flow and National Product Catalogue

Custom Food Control Plans and National Programmes

Labelling Reports

HACCP Plans

HACCP is always best done with a team approach and there is always a lot to consider. HACCP should be the backbone of your entire food safety system, so if you don’t get it right you can either put your customers at risk, or end up doing a lot of unnecessary work. Let us join your team to make your foods safer and systems more efficient.

Food Science

Food science can be tough. Microbes are cunning, and chemical reactions can destroy the flavour of your food. The good news is that humans have been eating food since the beginning of time, and have constantly been driven to make it safer and more productive. We’ve devised some ingenious ways of keeping it fresh and tasty, and some techniques are becoming cleaner and healthier all the time. Take control of the microbiology, chemistry, and packaging of your food to optimise the protection, marketing and selling of your food.

Food Chemistry

Food Microbiology

Packaging

Shelf Life Studies

Allergen Management

Allergen management can be tricky. The law gives little direction and there can be a lot of inconsistency on the supermarket shelves. All too often the solution is to just label everything, but to those with allergies, this isn’t always helpful.

Industry guidance is available if you know where to look and it is important to follow the process correctly. The majority of recent food recalls in New Zealand are allergen related so it is important to get it right as early as possible because new packaging is expensive. Let us help you through this minefield.

Allergen Management Plans

VITAL® Analysis

Legally compliant allergen labelling

Supermarket compliant allergen labelling and management

Ingredient control

Validated cleaning

Writing PIFs (Product Information Forms)

Food Processing and Engineering

Food engineering is a tough field to get good at – too often hands-on engineers don’t have the hygiene and managerial skills, and the graduate engineers don’t have the hands on factory experience. For one or the other to break through to the other side is tough and it can take years of years of hard fought experience. At Food Action we have years of both maintenance and project engineering management experience.

Project Engineering

Maintenance

Mathematical Modelling

Health and Safety

Process Control

Line Speed

Lean Manufacturing

Environmental Engineering and Management

Records Management

Are you drowning in a sea of records and have no control of your document control system? We might have the answer for you. During a recent overhaul of a food safety programme we removed 36 folders and replaced them with an efficient cloud based records management system that can be accessed by everyone who required the relevant information, backed up with a few simple paper based forms. Data can now be accessed by mobile app or securely off the internet. Contact us to find out if we can help you.

Developing a cloud based database was a game changer for us. Access to information improved, most of the systems went online, workflows became more efficient, it became possible to see what information was missing, and the mountain of folders almost disappeared.

We can now provide you will a full food control plan records management system in a matter of hours. Contact us to find out more.

Want to add production data using a simple tablet or smart phone. This can be an incredible tool for quickly sharing information between the factory floor and the office. We have a system that we can customise to your needs. Contact us to see a demo of how it works.

Excel is an incredibly versatile tool and there are always new functions to find. Are you using it efficiently? Using some basic automation scripting, jobs that usually take hours can be reduced to seconds, while becoming more reliable. Pivot tables can create powerful summaries of information and conditional formatting can make information easier to visualise.

Do your spreadsheets need a spruce up? Contact us and we can take a look for you; it might save you a lot of time and money.

Finding You What You Need

Sometimes its not what you know, its who you know.

We not only have a extensive range of industry and academic contacts, both nationally and internationally, we also have the skills, experience and ability to find the people we don’t know, and we can do it fast.

If you know what you want, but just don’t know how to find it, we can save you time and help.

Tracking down contract packers

Sourcing ingredients

Machinery selection

Packaging specification and sourcing

Expertise sourcing

Marketing, merchandising, brand management and distribution

Literature Search

The best start to any food project is a thorough literature search, yet many Kiwi clients are resistant to this and see it as an obstacle to getting stuck in.

Don’t stop after a Google search; even these days there is only a limited amount of quality information available on the internet.

We maintain an extensive library of knowledge, and are experts at accessing a huge amount of quality information. Let us help you fast track your project by getting the best information fast.

Articles

As contract food technologists, we work with an extensive range of food labels. Unfortunately, most jobs involve fixing up client’s simple mistakes which end up being costly. On the surface these mistakes look basic but

As a contract food technologist, I'd love to spend my whole day doing food technology, alas, that's just not how things work when you also have a manufacturing business. I've just been paid by Foodstuffs

Businesses forced to work under National Programmes find themselves in a difficult position. The official MPI guidance is a 4 page leaflet with some very vague requirements listed and from our discussions with verifiers, they

Most food products require a nutrition panel, but not all products. There are a few exceptions like vinegar, tea, or very small products like sachets of ketchup from takeaways which are exempt. Creating a nutrition

Food labelling in NZ is horribly complicated. Unfortunately too many new operators just go into a store, find a comparable product, and copy all the mistakes someone else has already made. Others are unaware of